How Jesse Jackson Made Politics 'Woke'

Whether you're an anti-woke conservative or an anti-racist lefty, you should thank Jesse Jackson.

University of California

What is woke?

While Huddie Ledbetter enshrined the term in the official Black American Unabridged Dictionary 80 years ago, the coal miners who used it in 1940 probably never heard Leadbelly’s song. By the 1960s, “woke” was so entrenched in Black culture that William E. Kelly wrote about the “negro idiom” in the New York Times. Ery…